In recent years, with the network communications becoming popularized, a variety of devices, such as printers, facsimiles, and scanners, have been made network compatible, and the opportunities of using these devices by a plurality of users through the network have been increasing.
When a device, such as a printer, is to be used by a personal computer (hereafter abbreviated as PC), the driver corresponding to the device to be used must be installed in the PC.
To install the driver, the device must be selected, and the driver for the selected device and the setting information, such as the address, must be acquired. This is troublesome not only for users who are not familiar with the operations of a PC, but also users who are familiar with such operations.
Therefore, some network systems are configured such that the driver distribution information is written in the domain server to be accessed at the time of logging in as a log-in script, so that the driver is installed when each PC is logged in the network. Further, there is another technology in which, when a PC enters the radio communication area for a wireless LAN (Local Area Network), the PC is allowed to communicate with the radio access point, and the driver is distributed from the access point to the PC (as disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 2002-259089, for example).
When a device, such as a printer, is to be used by a PC or the like, the driver corresponding to the device to be used must be installed in the PC. On such occasions, unless the user knows when such a device was installed and when it became available, the user cannot install the driver in the PC. Therefore, when the device was installed, the manager had to take a procedure to notify each user of the installation of the device and the information regarding the device.
There has been a technology for facilitating the above procedure, in which the server receives the printer identifier from a newly added network printer, generates an executable install program by using the printer identifier, and transmits the install program to the client processor. The client processor installs the executable install program (as disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 2000-215128, for example).
As stated above, the user must install the driver before using a printer or other device, and the processing for installing the driver is troublesome. In addition, the technology for installing the driver could demonstrate its advantageous utility only under such special conditions as that given when a radio LAN is used, or when a specific network system is employed as disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 2002-259089.
Further, with the technology as disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 2000-215128, the driver for a printer or the like is distributed also to the users who do not wish to use a device pertinent to that driver for such a reason as the installation-location of the device is remote. For such users, the distribution of the driver might have been a trouble.